From killings to rape, the heinous crimes that could get you less jail time than a Freedom Convoy organizer

National Post

28-07-2025

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The Crown would end up seeking the exact same sentence for the parents as that being sought for Barber: eight years in jail.
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Shooting at police
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In the summer of 2023 Siavash Ahmadi was pulled over by West Vancouver Police for suspected impaired driving. When instructed to retrieve his licence, Ahmadi instead reached into a bag of loaded guns, retrieved a pistol and fired at two officers from a distance of just two metres.
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Admadi didn't hit anyone, and neither did the officers when they returned fire. At trial last November, the Crown sought a sentence of seven years. Ahmadi ultimately received just four years, in addition to a $1,000 fine for impaired driving.
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Michael Augustine, 60, pled guilty to a 2022 incident in which he used his truck to intentionally ram a minivan carrying his step-daughter, whom he had just threatened to kill.
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The minivan, which was carrying a total of four children and two pregnant women, rolled multiple times before coming to a stop in the woods, 83 metres from the road. Miraculously, nobody was killed, despite one of the children being ejected from the crash.
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Despite Augustine's long history of violent criminal convictions, the Crown sought eight years, and Augustine was ultimately sentenced to five.
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While staying at an Edmonton homeless shelter, Stanley Jago attacked a confused fellow resident who had been returning from the bathroom, beating the man so badly that he suffered a fatal seizure.
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In the court proceedings that followed, Jago gained a reputation for unstable behaviour, such as threatening court participants or attempting to attack sheriffs.
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Jago was convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to five years — just slightly less than the five-and-a-half years the Crown had been seeking.
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In arguing that 56-year-old Prakash Lekhraj didn't feel any remorse for raping a teenaged girl, the Crown would only have needed to point to Lehkraj's testimony that 'he never needs to seek the consent of a female to have sexual relations with her.'
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Lehkraj was convicted of both sexual assault and the production of child pornography for an August 2020 assault in which he photographed himself raping a minor before uploading the images to an online group chat. The victim 'took it like a champ,' wrote Lekhraj.
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The Crown sought a sentence of four to five years, but a judge went with three years and three months.
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IN OTHER NEWS
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Amidst Canada's bid to fortify its economy against U.S. trade aggression, easily the most low-lying fruit has been the spectre of interprovincial trade barriers. The various regulatory issues that make it hard for provinces to trade with one another cost the Canadian economy an estimated $160 billion per year.
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Nevertheless, despite some early successes in knocking down the barriers, a major setback occurred this week when Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew bowed out of a trade deal with Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario that would commit all four provinces to collaborate on new pipelines, rail links and other infrastructure. Kinew didn't sign on the grounds that no such projects should proceed without Indigenous 'consensus.' That also happens to be the high standard that Prime Minister Mark Carney has suggested for any new federally administered infrastructure; that nothing gets built unless it has 'a consensus of all the provinces and the Indigenous people.'
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